Future lies in Salt Lake for 4 execs on the spot

For
four executives, the 2002 Winter Olympics will greatly influence the health of their
organizations for years to come.

International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge presides
over the first Games in the post-Juan Antonio Samaranch era. Samaranch was not always
loved or fully understood by the world's media, but his management of the Olympic
movement led to staggering increases in participation, rights fees and viewership
as well as complaints of unethical IOC bidding procedures and athlete doping.

The Winter Games represent the first international sports event
for new U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Lloyd Ward, who took over in October and joined
a quest to see America win 20 competition medals at Salt Lake. Ward was recently
named to the IOC's influential marketing commission and joins the Olympic movement
at a time when the commercialism of sport is attacked regularly and the ratings
for the Olympics have fallen for three consecutive Games.

For World Anti-Doping Agency chief Dick Pound, these are his second
Games for catching drug cheats. Pound, who formerly ran the IOC's marketing and
network negotiations, was a candidate for the IOC presidency but finished third
in voting by IOC members. Rogge has asked the accomplished Montreal lawyer to continue
with the IOC and investigate opportunities to limit the scope and costs associated
with the Olympics.

Finally, this may be the most important Olympiad for NBC Sports
czar Dick Ebersol, whose efforts in Sydney for the 2000 Games resulted in the lowest-rated
Olympiad (in the United States) of all time. Much of that rating decline was due
to time zone differences and the proliferation of cable and Internet options, but
with NBC having lost the NFL, MLB and NBA in the last four years, General Electric's
television network now finds the Olympics as its flagship sports event.

Collectively, these four men will play a huge role in shaping
the health of amateur sports in America for a generation of children who increasingly
find themselves overprogrammed with entertainment options. We know they love their
Sony PlayStations, Microsoft Xboxes, AOL and Yahoo! e-mail accounts, but we should
also know they are frequently misunderstood by networks and sport properties alike.

Here's the rub. The ancient Greeks loved sport for its physical
ability to differentiate men based on honor, courage, strength, agility and commitment
to higher ideals. For these four, their task may now stand to keep the "purity"
of sport alive in a time when financial or commercial interests dominate.

Pound and Ebersol played a role in negotiating the richest broadcast
rights fee ever and thus guaranteed the free, over-the-air transmission of the ideal.
They must now combine to create the impression the Games are worthy. Ward, who previously
ran Maytag, after stints at Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, must, without appearing
crass and commercial, secure sponsorships that can fund the winning of American
medals.

And Rogge, the former Belgian surgeon, must save the very concept
of Olympic sport. No mean task when the process starts in a city that may have bent
the rules to host the Games and the sports featured are a mish-mash of snowboarding,
skeleton racing, freestyle skiing and ice dancing.

Rick Burton is executive director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing
Center at the University of Oregon.